The Signaling Atlas for Neurophysiology using Kinetics from Experiments and Theory (SANKET, सन्केत्) seeks to develop data-driven, rigorously parameterized models of neuronal signaling across scales, in health and disease, and in a range of systems. The data, models, and tools are open so as to serve as a community resource for research, teaching, and translation.
What does Sanket mean?
SANKET means signal in Sanskrit
What do we do?
The SANKET consortium does experiments, databases, and models
What do we study?
We have projects on Autism, presynaptic signaling, and synaptic plasticity
How do we do it?
We get data from experiments. We codify the data and put it in databases.
We build models on which we run these experiments.
We build tools to run, visualize, and optimize these models.
Who can use it?
Everyone. SANKET is open: the models, the tools, and the structured database of encoded experiments
What can I do here?
Explore: Look at the projects, experiments, and models in SANKET
Try it out: Pick an experiments and run it on a predefined models.
Participate: Contact a team lead if you're interested in a project.
The sum total of functioning of the brain is a collaborative outcome of interactions at multiple levels. Animal (and human) behaviour is an output of many different brain areas functioning together with many neurons in each area interacting, exchanging data as a part of circuit. This part of the brain-behavior nexus is being actively studied in both experiments and predictive models and most times, in unison.
Neuron-to-neuron communication via chemical synapses is orchestrated by complex signaling cascades and protein-protein interactions. Unlike the behavior-circuit level work, there are few and that too rudimentary models, that simulate the chemical kinetics of these signals towards a tangible physiological correlate. This gap stems from the fact that neuronal signaling is thought to follow the same kinetics are signaling cascades from other cell types and most signaling cascades have been studied through monitoring selected proxy molecules (major kinases) rather than systematically across each level of the cascade. This gap has enormous implications for building accurate models of chemical dynamics in neurons and by extension knowing how activator or inhibitors affect synaptic signaling and firing.
Sanket (The Signaling And Neurophysiology Knowledge-resource for Experiments and Theory) is an effort to fill the gaps that handicap accurate and predictive model generation of synaptic signaling in neurons. It is a collaborative effort of neuroscientist with experimental and computation expertise across multiple scales to, a)generate multi-node signaling networks with feedback regulation; b) identify data for "gaps" present in signaling cascades and generate data to addresses these; c) identify systems level signatures of signaling in response to established neuronal stimulation; d) model these for "healthy" and "diseased" neuron and e) set up systems to disseminate this as a public access resource.
Sanket stakeholders are spread across India and around world, engaging across academic and industry borders as well. We welcome interactions at multiple levels to help us achieve these wide reaching objectives.